One of my “take-aways” from “CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment 2009” earlier this month is the reminder of my own previous experience, that terms like “Cloud Computing,” “Platform as a Service (PaaS)” and “Software as a Service (SaaS)” often mean many (different) things to many people. Business managers responsible for asset management and utilization come at this from an entirely different perspective than technologists, and questions beginning with “What do you mean by….” Come up early and frequently in any discussion of asset tracking and monitoring solutions. There is a plethora of resources available on the internet to help bound or clarify these questions. Here are a (very) few which represent a wide variety of perspectives and contain a lot of interesting and useful information:
Wikipedia: Not the resource of interest for technologists, this is a quick and succinct source of info for those unfamiliar with the technology and terminology of Cloud Computing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/cloud_computing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_as_a_Service
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_as_a_Service
Salesforce.com: A pioneer in Cloud Computing platforms, most notably for CRM and related business services applications, Salesforce.com is a great source of easy reading about the relevance and value of Cloud Computing, PaaS and SaaS for business applications. This link includes a terrific, short video that is worth watching.
http://www.salesforce.com/cloudcomputing
Virtually all technology industry analysts cover Cloud Computing in their reports, webinars and blogs – usually focused on the needs of enterprise class and midsized businesses. This link takes you to a downloadable PowerPoint slide deck used by Forrester in a webinar on Cloud Computing that they held on February 3 of this year. The presentation is focused on enterprise businesses but includes information of all sizes of businesses.
http://www.forrester.com/imagesV2/uplmisc/CloudComputingWebinarSlideDeck.pdf
Media companies also provide a variety of information sources about Cloud Computing throughout the internet. I have included links to just a couple of these.
GigaOm Network is a business media company – have multiple blogs. Site launched in 2006 by veteran technology journalist Om Malik. Their cloud blog covers all types of current new and discussions in the broad area of cloud computing.
http://gigaom.com/topic/the-cloud
Blogger Phil Wainwright’s “Software as Services” blog, ZDNet, covers cloud computing, including SaaS and PaaS. Phil has authored analyst reports on current trends in software-as-services.
Vickie Malis, SensorLogic Marketing
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